[MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[Dan Glover]

David, John,

On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 6:57 AM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Dan said to Ridgecoyote:
>
> ... Donald Trump for President? I'd say Trump appeals to a certain demographic in the United States, namely old, white, angry males. Luckily, those fanatics are in the minority.
>
>
>
> Ridgecoyote said to Dan:
>
> He reminds me of two other politicians, both hugely successful - Reagan and Putin.  Reagan was laughed at by the intellectuals and  his own party elite  but had the last laugh and Putin with his bigger-than-life self-promotion all the time.   In a way, I hope it happens.  I think the leader should reflect the character of the people and think Trump captures where America is at today.  Yuck, I know, but there it is.
>
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> Be careful what you wish for. Trump appeals to the creepiest, most hateful and ignorant demographic in the United States.

Dan:

I couldn't agree more. Trump is a master at playing the media for all
its worth. I think anyone guided by intellect rather than blindly
following the herd will see he is simply pandering to the lowest
common denominator in the polls. I'm guessing that as time goes by and
more people stop to think what the man is really saying, they'll come
to realize there are much better candidates out there, whether
Republican or Democrat.

>dmb:
> "At the time, I happened to be reporting on extremist white-rights
> groups, and observed at first hand their reactions to his candidacy.
> Trump was advancing a dire portrait of immigration that partly
> overlapped with their own. On June 28th, twelve days after Trump’s
> announcement, the Daily Stormer, America’s most popular neo-Nazi news
> site, endorsed him for President: 'Trump is willing to say what most
> Americans think: it’s time to deport these people.' The Daily Stormer
> urged white men to 'vote for the first time in our lives for the one man
>  who actually represents our interests.'
>
> Ever since the Tea Party’s peak, in
> 2010, and its fade, citizens on the American far right—Patriot militias,
>  border vigilantes, white supremacists—have searched for a
> standard-bearer, and now they’d found him. In the past, “white
> nationalists,” as they call themselves, had described Trump as a
> “Jew-lover,” but the new tone of his campaign was a revelation. Richard
> Spencer is a self-described “identitarian” who lives in Whitefish,
> Montana, and promotes “white racial consciousness.” At thirty-six,
> Spencer is trim and preppy, with degrees from the University of Virginia
>  and the University of Chicago. He is the president and director of the
> National Policy Institute, a think tank, co-founded by William Regnery, a
>  member of the conservative publishing family, that is “dedicated to the
>  heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States
> and around the world.” The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Spencer “a
> suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old.” Spencer told me
> that he had expected the Presidential campaign to be an “amusing freak
> show,” but that Trump was “refreshing.” He went on, “Trump, on a gut
> level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re
>  moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white
> nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious
> vision that white people have—that their grandchildren might be a hated
> minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably
> aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a
> great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon. I think he is the one
> person who can tap into it.”
> Jared Taylor, the editor of American Renaissance,
>  a white-nationalist magazine and Web site based in Oakton, Virginia,
> told me, in regard to Trump, “I’m sure he would repudiate any
> association with people like me, but his support comes from people who
> are more like me than he might like to admit.”
> From
>  the beginning of the current race, the conservative establishment has
> been desperate for Trump to be finished. After he disparaged the war
> record of Senator John McCain, the New York Post gave him a front-page farewell—“DON VOYAGE”—and a Wall Street Journal
>  editorial declared him a “catastrophe.” But Trump carried on—in part
> because he had activated segments of the electorate that other
> candidates could not, or would not. On July 20th, three days before his
> trip to Texas, Ann Coulter, whose most recent book is “¡Adios, America!
> The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole,”
> appeared on Sean Hannity’s show and urged fellow-Republicans to see
> Trump’s summer as a harbinger. “The new litmus test for real
> conservatives is immigration,” she said. “They used to say the same
> thing about the pro-life Republicans and the pro-gun Republicans, and,
> ‘Oh, they’re fringe and they’re tacky, and we’re so embarrassed to be
> associated with them.’ Now every one of them comes along and pretends
> they’d be Reagan.”
> From the New Yorker article, "The Fearful and the Frustrated" by Evan Osnos.
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-fearful-and-the-frustrated

Dan:

It's a shame anyone would compare Trump with Reagan, or Putin for that
matter. No matter what you think of those men, they were and are
consummate politicians capable of leading a downtrodden country out of
the doldrums and into a new era. Trump on the other hand wants to take
us back a hundred and fifty years to where women were kept barefoot
and pregnant and anyone not a white man was considered nothing but an
animal.

>
>
>
> Dan said to Ridge:
>
> County clerks withholding marriage licenses because of their religious convictions? Really? The christian fundamentalists are no different than radical Islam.
>
>
>
> Ridge said:
>
> Exactly.  Unfortunately, intellectuals don't have any effective means of dealing with either.  Intellectuals are too smart to get their hands dirty by talking about religious things, so religious things are allowed to grow and fester in the dark, uncriticized. That's a mistake  I believe and  Bagginni's article  confirms my belief.
>
>
>
> Dan replied:
>
> I'd say the court dealt with it... wouldn't you?
>
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> Yes, the court dealt with it and our highest laws speak directly to the issue of "religious things," particularly the first amendment to the constitution. It says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," etc.. Secular pluralism means religious freedom and that means protecting religious diversity and atheism too. It means the competition between ideas and values should not and cannot be decided by cops or armies but by critical engagement with those various ideas and values. Lawrence Krauss is hopelessly scientistic and more than a little anti-philosophical so I'm not a fan - but he makes some good points about the Kim Davis case.
>
>
> "Sometimes, I refer to the fact that religion and science are often in
> conflict; from time to time, I ridicule religious dogma. When I do, I
> sometimes get accused in public of being a “militant atheist.” Even a
> surprising number of my colleagues politely ask if it wouldn’t be better
>  to avoid alienating religious people. Shouldn’t we respect religious sensibilities, masking potential
> conflicts and building common ground with religious groups so as to
> create a better, more equitable world? I found myself thinking about
> those questions this week as I followed the story of Kim Davis,.." --
> Lawrence Krauss in "All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists"  (The New Yorker, Sept 8th).
>
>
> "Ultimately, when we hesitate to openly
>  question beliefs because we don’t want to risk offense, questioning
> itself becomes taboo. It is here that the imperative for scientists to
> speak out seems to me to be most urgent. As a result of speaking out on
> issues of science and religion, I have heard from many young people
> about the shame and ostracism they experience after merely questioning
> their family’s faith. Sometimes, they find themselves denied rights and
> privileges because their actions confront the faith of others.
> Scientists need to be prepared to demonstrate by example that
> questioning perceived truth, especially “sacred truth,” is an essential
> part of living in a free country. I
>  see a direct link, in short, between the ethics that guide science and
> those that guide civic life. Cosmology, my specialty, may appear to be
> far removed from Kim Davis’s refusal to grant marriage licenses to gay
> couples, but in fact the same values apply in both realms. Whenever
> scientific claims are presented as unquestionable, they undermine
> science. Similarly, when religious actions or claims about sanctity can
> be made with impunity in our society, we undermine the very basis of
> modern secular democracy. We owe it to ourselves and to our children not
>  to give a free pass to governments—totalitarian, theocratic, or
> democratic—that endorse, encourage, enforce, or otherwise legitimize the
>  suppression of open questioning in order to protect ideas that are
> considered “sacred.” Five hundred years of science have liberated
> humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance. We should celebrate
> this openly and enthusiastically, regardless of whom it may offend.   If that is what causes someone to be called a militant atheist, then no scientist should be ashamed of the label."
>
>
> I really don't understand how anyone can take sides with knuckle-draggers like Trump or Davis. If these people don't give you the willies, I think your hateful bullshit detector is broken.

Dan:
Exactly. And when you see the folks who are rushing to defend Davis
and to trumpet Trump, you can begin to understand the huge divides
between so-called red and blue states. Maybe it's a backlash against
the intellectualism of President Obama... these haters have waited a
long time to come out in force and they seem to sense this is their
time. Luckily, I do believe they are in the minority even though they
speak the loudest.

Thanks,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com